


Birchbarkskin

by dandeliontea



Series: tma fantasy week shorts [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Fae & Fairies, Gen, TMA Fantasy Week (The Magnus Archives), hints of Stranger-typical replacing people, mentions of flensing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 03:29:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29943822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dandeliontea/pseuds/dandeliontea
Summary: “What’s dues?” Jon had asked her, when his grandmother had placed out her wines and her creams by the window, muttering to herself sharply.“Price,” his grandmother had told him, and refused to meet his eyes. “Tithe, child.”Jon does some self-reflection concerning his nature.
Series: tma fantasy week shorts [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2205255
Comments: 6
Kudos: 39





	Birchbarkskin

**Author's Note:**

> Written for tma fantasy week, using the prompt ‘fae’. I might do a few more short things like this during the week — I do love a bit of fantasy!

Jon’s skin is more grey than brown now, and his fingers thin and long, ending in sharp claws. But despite this, the reflection that looks back at him in the mirror is... distressingly familiar. Those are the shape of his eyes, but entirely black, and without whites or irises. That is the curve of his mouth, but beneath it lie rows of needlepoint teeth, slender and pale in the dark of his mouth. That is still very much Jon’s hunched posture, his body, his wrinkled clothes, but beneath his shirt bulges a strange lump, so delicate and sensitive that Jon barely wants to move for fear of damaging it, ripping apart this new and strange part of himself before he can catch a real glimpse of it. The brush of fabric against it is not quite painful, but it certainly is uncomfortable.

Jon goes up to his office door and carefully, quietly locks it, and then even more carefully removes his shirt, inch by inch as he takes in the strange new texture of his skin — a little like birchbark, if he had to describe it — and edges it away from the lump at his back, which bares twitches in response. When he turns, it looks like two large pieces of paper have been stuck to his shoulder blades and then crushed in some massive fist.

Tim’s words come to him, very suddenly: _He had wings, like a butterfly, but a bit... damp. And squished. Like he hadn’t had them for long and they were still drying from their chrysalis._

 _It was wrong_ , Tim had said, of the Danny-imposter. _Twisted_.

Jon’s wings — because what else can they be? — shudder, sheaves of dark leaves against grey-brown barkskin. Is this the thing that Tim had hated so much?

 _Unnatural_ , Tim had then told the tape recorder, an iron blade of certainty behind his words. But the shining black of Jon’s eyes and the spiderweb silver tangled amongst the dark weeds of his hair say otherwise — he’s never seen anything as natural as this in his life, never seen himself look any _less_ twisted or wrong. His fingers trace gently down the hard black plastic of a tape recorder, and he switches it on almost without thought. 

“It’s gone,” he tells it, a hushed secret hidden in the words. “The glamour. It’s gone.” 

_They took him_ , Tim had continued, voice choked with his terror and his grief. _Flensed him, peeled him,_ replaced _him, drank in his agony and enjoyed it, like—like—_

Jon doesn’t quite remember what Tim had said it had been like after that, although he’ll never forget the shake in his voice, or the dampness of his cheeks. And as he remembers Jon’s wings begin, slowly, to unfurl from his back, like scaled brown flower petals opening to the cold autumn sun.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this please let me know through kudos or comments, x


End file.
